Land reform and the social origins of private farmers in Russia and Ukraine

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Abstract

This article examines land privatization in two administrative regions of Russia and Ukraine. In both regions, members of two distinct social groups were the beneficiaries of land distribution for private commercial cultivation: rural elites and people on the margins of rural society. This double-ended distribution led to the recapitulation of Soviet forms of production. Traditional analysis of agrarian economies emphasizes actual productive capacities, while literature on property rights centres on the presumed legal categories of production. This article integrates these two theoretical concerns to understand how private property regimes affected cultivation practices and thus, participation in markets.